Abbey Steele is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, and author of the book Democracy and Displacement in Colombia's Civil War. She holds a PhD in political science from Yale University (2010). Her research interests include civil wars, violence, and state-building. Between 2010 and 2012, she was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University with the Empirical Studies of Conflict project. She has conducted research in Colombia since 2002, when she was a Fulbright scholar. Her work has been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution and the Journal of Peace Research.